New Powerful Asus RT-AC5300 Router

Asus releases new RT-AC5300 wireless three band router with 4 data streams and MU-MIMO technology and powered by heavy duty hardware ideal for 4K video streaming and smart home.

Overview

If you look at the design of the Asus RT-AC3200 model which is equipped with 8 external antenna you will see an elegant wireless router device. Likewise, if you look at Netgear Nighthawk X6 with eight external antennas that can be folded inward, you will see a beautiful wireless router. This time Asus designs RT-AC5300 router with eight sturdy external antennas and mounted symmetrically on all four sides, you will see a wireless router like a crawling spider robot.

What this product does

Asus RT-AC5300 router is a three band wireless router, delivering twin 5GHz bands with the speeds of up to 2166Mbps and one 2.4GHz band delivering speeds of up to 1000Mbps with aggregate bandwidth of up to 5334Mbps.

The good thing with these three band technology is the addition of Smart Connect technology which automatically select the best available three bands for each connected wifi clients based on the client’s speed. typically legacy devices based on wireless G or N technology will automatically connect to 2.4GHz band, while the fast wireless AC-based devices connect automatically to the best available two of 5GHz bands. Signal strength and how busy the frequency band are also taken account by the system to decide which band the client will connect to.

Main features

Based on 5G wireless AC technology

Three band with Smart Connect technology

Delivering speeds of up to 4334Mbps in 2x5GHz band and up to 1000Mbps in 2.4GHz band powered Broadcom NitroQAMTM technology

AiProtection with Trend MicroTM with triple-strength total network security

Like previous versions of wireless AC3200 models such as D-link DIR-890L or new comer TP-link Archer C3200 that come with three band technology, Asus RT-AC5300 is also designed with three band technology with the enhanced speeds.

Have a look at the following video introduction to understand visually how this product looks like.

Comparison

Recently Netgear released similar wireless AC5300 router – the Nighthawk X8 / Netgear R8000. What might be main spec comparison between Asus RT-AC5300 and Nighthawk X8? On the other hand, D-link showcased similar product long time ago, however up to now (Nov 2015) the product is not released yet. I think it is a good idea to have comparison between this one and other similar products.

Have a look at the following two tables, table 1 shows you spec comparison between RT-AC5300 and Nighthawk X8 / R8000. And the other table shows you spec comparison between RT-AC5300 and D-link AC5300 router.

Wifi technology

All the three products are based on the same wireless AC5300 technology with Smart Connect and Beamforming antenna design. Technically all have the same speeds in each of their three bands. MU-MIMO technology is also applied to RT-AC5300 and Nighthawk X8, however D-link so far doesn’t show the spec if its product is featuring MU-MIMO technology.

Why MU-MIMO? With Multi User MIMO technology your router can give dedicated full speeds to multiple users at the same time, as opposed to traditional wireless router that server the client one in a time. Asus RT-AC5300 can serve up to 8-compatible MU-MIMO clients simultaneously without degrading the performance.

Antenna

As I mentioned at the first paragraph that RT-AC5300 is like a spider robot with eight legs, yes the router comes with eight active external antennas for high performance speed and large coverage. Netgear X8 comes with four active external antennas and four internal antennas. D-link comes with eight external antenna design like its AC3200 model. all the three featuring beamforming antenna technology for solid connection.

Ethernet Ports

Netgear X8 offers more ports (6 x Gigabit ports) for LAN than others that normally only four LAN gigabit ports. The two Gigabit ports can be combined to aggregate up to 2 Gigabit data throughput you can connect to heavy duty SAN or NAS storage. This is like the feature you can configure in Windows 2012 – the network teaming that allows you to combine two or more NIC adapter for aggregation.

Asus RT-AC5300 and D-link are like other wireless routers in general with four LAN ports. Four ports is enough for common usage in home that might include Smart TV, Blu-Ray, Game console and one desktop computer.

Table 1. Asus RT-AC5300 Vs Nighthawk X8

Asus RT-AC5300

Netgear Nighthawk X8

Wifi technology

Wireless AC5300 three band smart connect technology

Wireless AC5300 three band smart connect technology

Speeds

Wi-Fi speeds of up to 1000Mbps in 2.4GHz and up to 2166Mbps + 2166Mbps in 5GHz for total of 5332Mbps

Wi-Fi speeds of up to 1000Mbps in 2.4GHz and up to 2166Mbps + 2166Mbps in 5GHz for total of 5332Mbps

I have to separate the table into two for readability by mobile devices that have small displays. So far D-link does not release complete specs for this product so that’s why ‘Unspecified’ word is better than guessing.

Table 2. Asus RT-AC5300 Vs D-link DIR-895L

Asus RT-AC5300

D-link DIR-895L

Wifi technology

Wireless AC5300 three band smart connect technology

Wireless AC5300 three band smart connect technology

Speeds

Wi-Fi speeds of up to 1000Mbps in 2.4GHz and up to 2166Mbps + 2166Mbps in 5GHz for total of 5332Mbps

Wi-Fi speeds of up to 1000Mbps in 2.4GHz and up to 2166Mbps + 2166Mbps in 5GHz for total of 5332Mbps

If you run Windows 8 or Windows 10 in your gaming computers, typically the ‘Anti malware software’ or ‘Windows defender’ is active by default. You know that it drains your computer CPU and degrades the performance in some degrees. With AiProtection Trend Micro software runs in your Asus RT-AC5300 router you can disable your computer ‘Windows defender’ while you’re still well protected, so you can free CPU resource to use by the gaming for much better performance. Netgear and D-link don’t offer this software in their products.
You may consider new model of Asus AC86U AiMesh whole home wifi system – a wireless ac router that can be configured as mesh wireless network when combined with other AiMesh compliant devices including Asus RT-AC5300 router.